Technology
Good game
Is digital play just another type
of play or something parents
should be worried about?
Jane Mavoa interviewed by Loren Smith
C
ould Minecraft be as good for kids as playing ‘house’, or
pretending to be their favourite superheroes? Given the
controversy over screen time, this is a timely question –
one that researcher Jane Mavoa is exploring.
Based on her research, the University of Melbourne PhD
candidate from its School of Computing and Information Systems
has ventured that Minecraft indeed contains play elements.
Before discerning this, she and her colleagues interviewed 753
parents and found that nearly half of three to 12-year-olds play the
‘virtual world-building’ game.
Parents’ perceptions of it were mixed. They reported that it
fostered curiosity and social skills in their kids. On the flipside, they
worried about the amount of time their kids spent playing it, and
that it detracted from other activities, like non-screen-based play.
But Mavoa thinks Minecraft might at least deserve more play
credit. Education Review spoke with Mavoa and asked her to explain
what she means by this and why Minecraft is worth studying.
30 | educationreview.com.au
ER: I wanted to begin with the survey itself. Can you talk a bit
about what it involved?
JM: We wanted to do a survey because there were lots of
anecdotal bits of evidence that Minecraft was hugely popular, but
I wanted to look into it in more detail and I didn’t know which age
groups to look at. I thought, we’ll do a survey to try and find out
where it’s most popular and if there are any gender differences
and things like that.
We advertised through early learning centres and primary
schools and had 753 parents fill out the survey online. It asked
which games children played. They had to list three of those
favourite games, or the parents did on behalf of the child, and
what kind of other screen activities they engaged in.
Then there was a whole lot of questions specifically about
Minecraft. Which devices did they play it on? Who did they play
it with? What mode did they play in, and did they watch the
YouTube videos?
I understand the parents reported a number of positives and
negatives associated with Minecraft. Can you talk through some
of the main ones?
A high proportion of parents who answered the question had
positive things to say about the game, which was encouraging.
What they came up with most often related to creativity and
imagination. They would often write, “We love Minecraft because
it’s so creative,” or they would say something like, “My child really
enjoys the creativity in building or construction or design,” or they